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AI comes to Tokyo, masquerades as 7-year-old boy

Milos Cuparic

Milos Cuparic

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Many people are calling 2017 the year of AI, thanks in part to new tech innovations like Elon Musk’s Open AI. In 2017, we are also seeing a lot of chatbots in commercial use. In particular, Tokyo has is taking these chatbots seriously, and they’ve gone a step further when it comes to AI. They have given residency to a chatbot named Mirai.

AI comes to Tokyo, masquerades as 7-year-old boy

Mirai is programmed to be a 7-year-old boy who can have text conversations with users and make small, light-hearted alterations to selfies that you send him. Its new home is in Shibuya, a Tokyo ward with a population of around 224,000 people. “His hobbies are taking pictures and watching people, but he particularly loves talking with people… Please talk to him about anything,” the ward said in a statement with Microsoft. Mirai is a part of the Line messaging app.

The main goal with Mirai is to make the Tokyo government more accessible to the locals and to give them an avenue to share opinions with officials. Its  name means “Future” in Japanese.

While this all may sound like science fiction, let’s not forget that Saudi Arabia actually took the first step with granting residency to a robot named Sophia from Hanson Robotics. This robot showed off its great communication skills and facial expressions while conducting an interview.

Questions have been raised about the treatment of AI and robots. Should we treat them as humans even though they don’t possess human intelligence and aren’t self-aware? This is probably a question that we won’t be addressing in the near future, but it is definitely something worth considering as AI becomes more humanlike. What do you think?

Milos Cuparic

Milos Cuparic

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